La casa del exorcismo

THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM is what happened when the original, truly surreal horror film from Director Mario Bava, LISA AND THE DEVIL failed to turn a big profit. It was reworked, with extra scenes added / insinuated into the film. These scenes, starring Robert Alda as Father Michael, are about Lisa's (Elke Sommer) being possessed by a demon.

Of course, this had nothing whatsoever to do with the original movie, so new scenes of Lisa spouting obscenities, going bug-eyed, foaming at the mouth, spewing the obligatory green stuff, and contorting her body are inter-cut with the genuine footage from Bava's classic. The result is... bizarre.

Fans of LATD will watch agog, as their beloved film is edited, annihilated, and continually interrupted by what amounts to an unintentional parody of THE EXORCIST. This was obviously due to the huge popularity of that movie in the early 1970's. It's sort of like what might have happened if someone had decided to turn Hitchcock's PSYCHO into a comedy about motel management!

THE BURNING QUESTION: How was Ms. Sommer lured into trashing her own film, and making such a spectacle of herself in the process?...

This is the page for "House of Exorcism", but most people have confused this film with the Mario Bava masterpiece, "Lisa & the Devil", which explains the ridiculously high rating for this, "House of exorcism." When "Lisa & the Devil" was shown at film festivals in the early 70's, it was a critical success. Audiences responded well to that gorgeous, Gothic horror film. Unfortunately it was a bit ahead of it's time, and was considered too unusual, and not commercial enough for mass consumption. No distributor would buy it. So producer Alfredo Leone decided to edit 'Lisa', seemingly with a chainsaw, by removing just about half of the original film, and adding new scenes, which he filmed two years after the original product! It is important to note that Bava had little to do with these new, hideous additions, so technically "House of Exorcism" is not a Bava film. The original product is a slow, dreamy, classy production. A few minutes into the film, the viewer is jarred out of this dream world, as suddenly we see Lisa, (two years older, and with a very different haircut), begin to writhe on the ground, making guttural sounds and croaking epitaphs like "suck my co@k", etc. Subtle, huh? And the film continues like this, jumping back and forth between a beautiful, visual film, and a grade Z "Exorcist" rip-off. Leone was trying to incorporate these shock scenes, while keeping some semblance of a story intact. He failed miserably. When the choice was made to basically destroy "Lisa and the devil", Bava himself refused, saying that his film was too beautiful to cut. He was right, and it must have been quite sad for this artist to see all his work destroyed and flushed down the toilet. It was many years before the original "Lisa and the Devil" was seen again, re-surfacing on late night television. I had seen "lisa" long before i saw this new version, and it was downright disturbing to witness one of my favorite films "vandalised" in this way. Worth seeing only for curiosity sake. Otherwise avoid this insidious disaster like the plague.

Lisa and the Devil was a film directed by Mario Bava, it had a limited cinema release in 1973 but was soon withdrawn by producer Alfredo Leone as he did not know how to market this strange, lyrical film. It sat on the shelf for a couple of years with no distributer interested in picking it up, so Leone decided to attempt to make some money back on his investment. Two years later he returned with one of the participants from the first film, Elke Sommer - along with Robert Alda and Carmen Silva, neither of whom appeared in Lisa and the Devil at all - and, with Bava's assistance, directed a batch of new, completely unrelated material. He then merged these new scenes in with parts from the original film. The resultant movie became known as The House of Exorcism. Like some other Italian films from the time like L'anticristo it clearly was designed to cash in on the success of The Exorcist, as it is basically a rip off of this film in many ways. Lisa and the Devil, on the other hand, had nothing to do with demonic possession and its story is completely unrelated.

The biggest single problem with The House of Exorcism is that if you are already familiar with Lisa and the Devil it's very difficult disassociating the scenes from that movie from their original intent. It simply just makes you want to see them again in their original context. When I watch The House of Exorcism, it's the new bits that interest me; the stuff from Lisa is just simply distracting. The contrast in tone between the two sections of film is massive, where the stuff from Lisa is beautiful and fairly subtle; House of Exorcism is relentlessly coarse and goes for shock value. It's pretty much an exploitation movie and the sequences from Lisa and the Devil do not fit into its tone and story-line well at all. In fairness, it may work a lot better - maybe even quite well - if you have never seen the original film but I suspect most people going into this already have and that's essentially the problem.

The new material is set mainly in a hospital where Lisa (Elke Sommer) is confined after being possessed by the Devil. A priest (Robert Alda) tries to exorcise her. The new scenes are typified by Sommer barking out obscenities at Alda. There's lots of green vomit, a vision of a beautiful naked woman and...frogs. The new stuff's not that bad really and would have no doubt have made an entertaining schlockfest if it had constituted the full movie. But, as it is, the majority of the run-time is made up of re-used material from Lisa and the Devil, which is distracting and useless if you have seen the original already. Nowadays, with the original film readily available, The House of Exorcism has become no more than a curiosity piece. Fun to watch for the added possession material but as a whole it doesn't work anymore.

If you listen to Alfredo Leone's commentary on House of Exorcism, you'll understand, if not approve, of what Leone did to salvage his investment. His re-edit and added footage accomplished his goal. He avoided taking a huge loss on Lisa and The Devil. Business before art.

Bava of course did not approve of his master work being mutilated and that ultimately led to a split in their business relationship. Leone states in his commentary that his respect for Bava remained. According to Leone, Bava did not care for nudity and swearing and would not stay on the set when those new scenes were shot with Elke and Carmen Silva as the naked temptress incarnation of Elke. I always found this interesting about Bava. He would film the most horrendous violence and gore in perverse scenarios (mainly directed at women like most filmmakers) but balked at cursing and exposed female flesh.

The takeaway from this is that Lisa and The Devil was produced and exists independently and the commercial salvage job called House of Exorcism made money.

Okay, so I saw 'House Of Exorcism' the re-edited version of Mario Bava's 'Lisa And The Devil' with the added cash in footage. I've heard great things about the original version, but I haven't yet had an opportunity to view it so I'm sticking with this, the "unauthorized" cut. Bava must have had mixed feelings about it seeing as his name has been removed as director. I can understand why, because I'm a little ambivalent about it myself. This is in many ways a confusing mess of a movie, but overall enjoyable enough and holds the interest until the end. Elke Sommer, who had previously worked with Bava on the uneven 'Baron Blood', plays an American tourist apparently possessed by the Devil. While being exorcised by a priest (Robert Alda), we cut to a series of events involving her being picked up hitch hiking and taken to a mysterious mansion populated by various nuts, not least of which is Leandro, the mysterious lollipop sucking butler (yep, you guessed it, Telly Savalas). This footage (recycled from the original 'Lisa And The Devil') is either hallucination or flashbacks or both, and Leandro may or may not be the Devil. It's all very hard to tell. Frankly, you won't even care. Even so, I enjoyed this movie even if it was incoherent most of the time. It may not be genuine Bava but it's a lot of fun, and I must admit I preferred it to 'Baron Blood'. Take from that what you will.